People in the mortgage industry talk endlessly about digital transformation, but that conversation tends to gloss over the harder question: does any of it actually hold up when the system is under real pressure? It’s one thing for a process to work in a controlled environment or a polished demo. It’s another for it to perform consistently across thousands of loans moving simultaneously through different systems, counterparties, and checkpoints. That’s really what sits at the

With continued margin compression, operational scrutiny, and an unrelenting push toward efficiency, lenders are increasingly turning to Automated Valuation Models (AVMs) as a scalable alternative, or complement, to appraisals. The trajectory is clear: more data, more sophisticated models, and growing regulatory support are all converging to accelerate AVM adoption. But as is often the case in mortgage lending, progress has brought with it a new layer of complexity. That compl

Last month, the Trump administration issued an executive order aimed at housing finance. Within the EO the following was spelled out: Sec . 7 . Digital Mortgage Modernization . The Secretary of HUD, the Secretary of VA, and the Director of the FHFA shall consider, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law: (i) eliminating unnecessary wet-signature requirements for disclosures, applications, closing documents, and similar documents; (ii) standardizing acceptance

Spring always brings the same conversation in mortgage. Inventory is picking up. Buyers are more active. Phones are ringing a little more. There is this general sense that the market is waking up again. But while most loan officers are focused on what is coming in, very few are paying attention to what is already sitting there. Because buried in almost every CRM is a much larger opportunity than the new leads everyone is chasing. It is the deals we thought were dead. Last fal

After coming off a holiday weekend and entering a lower liquidity environment today, the market is primed for more volatility, setting up for when Trump takes the podium at noon central time today to discuss the current Iran war. Off the heels of a stronger-than-expected jobs number on Friday (which had lower conviction given it was pre-Iran war), we are left with more of a longer digestion period with traders reentering the office today. That said, traders are mostly cogniza

I’m not sure anyone truly owns the borrower anymore. That might sound off, especially at a time when the largest players in our industry are doubling down on scale… acquiring servicing portfolios, building end-to-end ecosystems, and positioning themselves to manage the entire customer lifecycle. The assumption is simple. Control the servicing asset… control the relationship. But here’s what I keep coming back to. At the street level, that borrower’s journey is rarely that sim

For years, trigger leads have been one of the mortgage industry's worst open secrets. A borrower applies with one lender, their credit gets pulled, and suddenly their phone lights up with calls, texts, and competing offers from companies they never asked to hear from. That's exactly what the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act was designed to curb. The law was signed on September 5, 2025 and took effect on March 5, 2026. It amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act to sharply limit

Communicating price directionality has been distilled down to an almost binary composition: oil goes up, rates go up. Oil goes down, rates go down. Thankfully, the volatility of what was initially an unforeseen inflationary variable has begun to subside. That’s not to say oil has moved lower, rather the erratic knee jerk price action has faded. What this suggests is that the market is starting to capitulate to the notion that the war in Iran likely won’t be short lived. And w

For decades, the mortgage industry has focused, rightfully so, on building standards that improve the efficiency, accuracy, and interoperability of the loan manufacturing process . From application through underwriting, closing, and servicing, the work of MISMO has helped create the connective tissue that allows lenders, investors, regulators, and technology providers to communicate with one another through a common language. But we know that the mortgage journey actually beg

In this current environment, price targets age about as well as leftover milk. If there were a chart metric for panic locking, the benchmark would be the BPM of LO’s and real estate agents watching rates forge higher. Meanwhile, the 10yr might as well be correlated to a herd of cats with a garden hose. Forget fundamentals, the only thing the market cares about right now is the belief or disbelief in the word “transitory.” The timing of all this is all but impeccable (cue sa

Mortgage professionals tend to watch the same handful of indicators when thinking about rate movement. The 10-year Treasury. Mortgage-backed securities. Inflation data. Fed commentary. But another signal may be quietly emerging in the background: prediction markets. Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket allow participants to trade contracts tied to real-world outcomes. Instead of buying a stock or bond, traders buy contracts tied to questions like: Will the Federal Reserve rai

We do not have the right to criticize this industry if we are unwilling to invest in improving it. Not in private conversations. Not in conference hallways. Not in boardrooms. If we benefit from the infrastructure of mortgage banking, from its standards, its frameworks, its collective trust, then we carry a responsibility to help sustain it. I earned my Certified Mortgage Banker (CMB) designation in 2005. The CMB is not simply a credential. It is a professional standard recog

I came across a piece in National Mortgage Professional last week about Zillow partnering with Google to integrate its home-buying content into NotebookLM. This move builds on Zillow’s upstream strategy after integrating with ChatGPT at the end of 2025. If you have not played with NotebookLM yet, it is Google’s AI research tool. You give it sources and it becomes an expert on those sources. Zillow is now feeding it its home-buying content library. Guides on preapproval, aff

Studying the mortgage industry for over 35 years, I’ve learned: the winners don’t just think better. They move faster. We talk a lot about rates, inventory, consolidation, and AI. All important. But none of it matters if you’re slow to act. Speed is no longer a tactic. It’s a discipline. Consumer direct channels figured this out years ago with one simple concept: speed to lead. The data is overwhelming. The faster you respond to an inquiry, the higher your conversion rate. Mi

Two weeks ago, we talked about "vibe coding" as a mindset shift for loan officers. Not learning to code. Not becoming a software company. Simply using modern AI tools to turn plain-English ideas into live, useful resources faster than traditional marketing workflows allow. This week, I want to make it tangible. I built a live consumer-facing page using nothing more than an AI assistant and our CRM. No developer. No design sprint. No long intake process. The goal wasn't to cre

Politics, policy, and a market trying to recalibrate after a burst of volatility were the names of the game this week. President Trump’s announcement that he intends to nominate former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve Chair was the largest headline. While Warsh is a known quantity with prior Fed experience and deep ties to Wall Street, the nomination introduced renewed debate about Fed independence, especially as the Supreme Court considers

There’s a reason conversations about the Innovation Investment Fee (IIF) often start with confusion rather than conviction. One of the most common, and most honest, things I hear from executives is this: “I don’t really understand what MISMO does, let alone why I should care enough to pay.” That observation sits at the root of the challenge. When standards work well, they’re invisible. They don’t show up in sales meetings or earnings calls. They don’t have a logo on the borr

Mortgage marketing has turned into a speed game. In a purchase market, the advantage goes to the loan officer who can ship helpful things fast. The LOs winning attention are not always the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who can launch something useful quickly, test it in the real world, and improve it without waiting on a vendor queue. That is where “vibe coding” comes in. The label is new, but the idea is simple: you describe what you want in plain English,